Phil Vischer

Phil Vischer (born June 16th, 1966 in Muscatine, Iowa) is American voice actor, puppeteer, writer, animator and songwriter. He is best known for creating the series VeggieTales and Big Idea with his partner Mike Nawrocki.

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"Departure" from Big Idea

Since after the production of their first feature film was complete, a lot of fans thought Phil left the company and wasn't interested working there and thought he hated his past work, and even some crew members believe the rumors for a while. However, Phil states this is not entirely true and this what he said in his podcast.

During the production of Jonah, the company was in financial trouble due to various events (e.g. HiT Entertainment trying to sue them after buying the rights from Lyrick Studios). Around that time, they hired a lot of people to help out with their productions before they went bankrupted. There was one new guy who was a new producer and thought he was king, but then one production he was working on wasn't going well, which resulted the project being shut and made the new producer really mad. Just as the company was being bankrupt, the producer thought Phil was the problem for not letting the crew members doing what they want. So when Classic Media brought the company afterwards, the producer place in their contract that Phil should stay away from being CEO. When Phil had a meeting with the owners, he suggested that he should remain as CEO. But this was overturned when John and Eric wanted the company to move somewhere in Nashville and they only wanted Phil as a consultant, and give him an office allowance so he can stay in Chicago.

What the producer put on the contract is that if Phil came back, he'll walk away and stop making the shows. So during the next few years, Phil wrote some books and created both Jelly Telly and What's In the Bible. Sometime afterwards, Classic Media was brought by Entertainment Rights from London and Phil thought he'll get an opportunity. But then months later, the company was brought by two other guys and because of it, a lot of cuts had to be made at Big Idea. Fortunately much later, John and Eric brought the company back and thought he'll get another opportunity and possibly join both Jelly Telly and Big Idea together. However, things didn't go well as the head of the company stated they're not interested in Jelly Telly (and possibly shut it down) and didn't want to continue What's In the Bible?. Phil still wanted to continue his current show, so he rejected the offer.

In 2011, Phil heard in the trades that both John and Eric were selling the company to Dreamworks, so he waited for a phone call from them if they're interested in being involved in Big Idea again. However, he never received one from anyone there. Regardless, Phil stayed in the company doing voices and wrote some episodes after the bankruptcy.

In 2018, Phil officially left Big Idea, stating on Twitter that he was not returning to work on any more new episodes after VeggieTales in the City ended production.

According to the DVD commentary of Dave and the Giant Pickle, he stated that the desert environment, along with the space environment used in episode 3, were the easiest environments to create at the time.

In episode 36 of his podcast, he was often known as "Flip" by his family. According to his mom, this was because when you say "Phillip" fast, it would sound like that. Phil had trouble dealing on his name for a while.

He started making short films with his family's Super 8 camera when he was eight years old.

He once met John Lasseter during a Siggraph convention sometime in the 1980s according to his autobiography.